CANADA: Rats have dreams, claims a new research conducted on the neurons in the hippocampus in their brain. In an interesting research project undertaken at University College London, researchers have found that rats dream about the treats which they couldn’t otherwise reach. They dream about walking towards those treats.
The research team said that the discovery may provide some insight into what happens in the human mind during sleep.
Scientists already knew that after a rat has explored an area, certain neurons in the hippocampus called “place cells” replay those patterns while the rat sleeps.
Like people, rats store mental maps of the world in their hippocampi, two curved structures on either side of the brain. Putting electrodes into rats’ brains as they explore their environment has shown that different places are recorded and remembered by different combinations of hippocampal neurons firing together.
“Place cells” in both rats and humans help us store memories about location and form mental maps. If scientists can record the activity of specific brain cells, then, they can spy on how the mind maps new places. So far, that kind of recording requires implanting tiny electrodes on very thin wires into the brain, which can’t be done with human subjects for ethical reasons, but it’s possible with rats.
First, researchers let rats explore a T-shaped track. The rats could run along the center of the T, but the arms were blocked by clear barriers. While the rats watched, researchers put food at the end of one arm. The rats could see the food and the route to it, but they couldn’t get there.
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